How to calculate the difference between two timestamps?

Matthew Lincoln

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Jun 1, 2008, 2:21:31 AM6/1/08

to

In a shell script I would like to calculate the difference between two timestamps.
It should look like similar to:

mystart=`date`
....
do something
....
myend=`date`
elapsed=calcdiff($mystart, $myend)
echo elapsed time=$(elapsed +%d:%H:%M:%S)

However the script above does not work.

Further question when the runtime is greater than 31 days does %d above then contain e.g. "35"
or does it contain a value modulo 31 (here: 4) ?

Matthew

Vilmos Soti

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Jun 1, 2008, 3:43:54 AM6/1/08

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kmlinc...@hotmail.com (Matthew Lincoln) writes:

> In a shell script I would like to calculate the difference between
> two timestamps.
> It should look like similar to:
>
> mystart=`date`

Try this:

$ mystart=`date +%s`

> ....
> do something
> ....
> myend=`date`

Ditto. If you use the %s parameter, then you will get the diff between
the two calls in seconds. Then you can easily manipulate that.

Vilmos

stro...@gmail.com

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Jun 1, 2008, 5:21:53 AM6/1/08

to

First, you have to construct timestamps, not dates.
In some cases, date don't have format option %s in some versions.
Then you can get timestamp with gnu awk with systime() or mktime()
function as following:
awk 'BEGIN {print systime()}'
So you code will be following:

start="$(awk 'BEGIN {print systime()})'" # or date +"%s"
do_something
end="$(awk 'BEGIN {print systime()})'" # or date +"%s"
diff="$(awk 'BEGIN {print strftime("%Y %m %d %H %M %S", '$(( ${end} - $
{start} ))')}')"
echo "${diff}"

Regards,
Jakub

stro...@gmail.com

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Jun 1, 2008, 5:28:28 AM6/1/08

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On 1 Čen, 08:21, kmlincoln...@hotmail.com (Matthew Lincoln) wrote:

First, you have to convert dates to timestamps.
In some date versions, the formatter options %s is missing. Then you
can get timestamps with gnu awk version with date functions.
So your code will be following:

start="$(awk 'BEGIN {print systime()}')"

do_something
end="$(awk 'BEGIN {print systime()}')"

Javi

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Jun 1, 2008, 6:21:17 AM6/1/08

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why not taking the date with seconds (date +%s ) and then transform
the seconds diff on days / hours .. ?

Joachim Gann

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Jun 1, 2008, 10:30:30 AM6/1/08

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Matthew Lincoln wrote:
> In a shell script I would like to calculate the difference between two timestamps.

GNU date (unix time in seconds):
$ date --date=now +%s
1212330415

rest is a piece of cake

Bill Marcum

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Jun 1, 2008, 12:42:42 PM6/1/08

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calcdiff is not a standard command. If your system has a calcdiff
command, arguments are usually not enclosed in parentheses or separated
by commas. If you have the GNU date command, you can write:
mystart=$(date +%s)
...
myend=$(date +%s)
elapsed=$((myend - mystart))
echo elapsed time="$elapsed" seconds

Unruh

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Jun 1, 2008, 2:39:18 PM6/1/08

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kmlinc...@hotmail.com (Matthew Lincoln) writes:

>In a shell script I would like to calculate the difference between two timestamps.
>It should look like similar to:

>mystart=`date`
mystart=`date +%s`

>....
>do something
>....
>myend=`date`

myend=`date +%s`

>elapsed=calcdiff($mystart, $myend)

elapsed=$(($myend-$mystart))
hour=$(($elapsed/3600))
minute=$(($elapsed/60-60*$hour))
sec=$(($elapsed-3600*$hour-60*$minute))
echo $hour':'$minute':'$sec

Dave Kelly

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Jun 4, 2008, 10:30:23 PM6/4/08

to

use this code snippet to calculate the difference. I did this back in
05-06

NOW=$(date -d "`lynx -dump http://www.tldp.org/timestamp.txt`" +%s)
TIMESTAMP=$(date -d "`lynx -dump -connect_timeout=20 $url/
timestamp.txt`" +%s)

if [[ "$TIMESTAMP" == "" ]] ; then
continue
fi
TIMEFRAME=$(($NOW - $TIMESTAMP))
## printf "Time frame is: %s\n" "$TIMEFRAME"
if [ "$TIMEFRAME" -gt 1209600 ] ; then
cat messagefile | mail -s "TLDP mirror update request"
$admin_email
echo $url" * "$admin_email $TIMEFRAME >> TLDPreminderlog